I am a Turkish ph.d student living in New England, and I will most probably continue living in the US after graduation. I have lived in Europe and the US as well as my home country Turkey. I am a very open-minded, and more like a Western-oriented person in lifestyle although I still have many Turkish characters in me.

But I am not your typical Turk. I love my country, language, cuisine and religion and I will keep talking about them, but on the other hand, I have no problem marrying a non-Turkish, non-moslem person in the future. I am not a jealous type, I don´t try to own my girlfriend, or seek a virgin. Actually I would like to marry a local person in order to best mix with the American culture, so that I won´t stick out because no matter what they say, there is a great deal amount of prejudice and discrimination against foreigners here. No matter how good English I speak, and as a matter of fact, I worked as a translator, teacher and linguist, my accent is still there! And with that in mind, the life is a lot harder here.

Given all that I would like to get in a relationship with an American girl, and no, it is not because of greencard or something, since this kinda marriage can easily be arranged in my case, it´s just because I´d wish to engage with an American woman if I would continue my life in America. However, all the women I have been somehow involved with were Europeans, who were supposed to have grudge and racist feelings against Turks. My best friends were Serbian and Greeks, and aren´t those supposed to have the most negative feelings towards Turks? No matter what kinda prejudice they´d historically have, European women were always much more open-minded in personal relations. It was always much easier to contact and connect with them, to relate to them and to engage in a relationship with them.

Americans, on the other hand, have always been an impossibility for me. First of all, they are ignorant and/or prejudiced against Turks and also unwilling to bother to even think about anything serious with me. This is actually a general pattern of behavior here against foreigners. The so called hospitality is completely fake and does not exist on personal level, and once they are done with their jobs, they pay zero attention to you. I never felt so lonely in any country. I had made 60 friends in the first month I was in Europe. I have been in the US for 3 years, I still hardly have any American friends. Don´t get me wrong, I have many friends, but the vast majority are either other foreigners or Turks like me. And without local friends, how am I supposed to get integrated with the culture?

Maybe this is just the New England culture... I´ve been told that it is very different down in the South, which I never had a chance to visit. I´d like to meet and date American girls and maybe marry one someday. Now that I will live in the US, it only makes sense. I heard lots of love stories of Americans marrying Turks, but it hardly ever happens around me and I have had no luck so far. They don´t even consider dating a foreign guy.

I hope I did not sound rude or crude. Any suggestions???

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Interesting thread , hmm then marry a european girl especially a slavic origin like our great Sultans did in the past  if you plan to marry a girl other than Turk. I guess you do not have a necessity to get married with an American.

The title is a bit misleading. How do you know that they are the worst?

They have been the worst among those I have contacted with so far, and boy I have contacted people from dozens of countries. In Europe, it was mainly different kinds of European people, and in US, add this to many Asian people such as the Indian, Chinese etc as well as Europeans.

@armageddon

I don´t need to, but I would wish to, because this is America where I am living, my relatives are married to Americans, and are naturalized citizens. For personal and family-related reasons, I need to live on here, and it just makes a lot more sense to me to marry an American, regardless of her background (religion etc), which doesn´t bother me, on the contrary, I´d like her to be as a regular American as possible, and I have no intentions whatsoever to convert her to Islam or being a Turk or something.

I guess you are entitled to your opinion.  However, I am an American woman who has been married to a Turk for several years now.  There are several of us on this site, so thanks for soundly insulting us all.  I don´t find your post to reflect your alleged open mindedness, in fact it only underscores your hostility towards strong women.

Since you asked for suggestions, might I suggest that you stop assuming that everyone hates you because you are Turkish.  I know this may be hard to accept but perhaps the women you are meeting just don´t like you.

The basic problem is that you are looking for an American girl. You shouldn´t be looking for a girl based on her country of origin. You should be looking for a smart girl, a funny girl, a sweet girl, whatever personality fits you best. What difference does it make if she is American or not? If a guy would come to my here in Holland, and I would feel that he only showed me any interest was because he really has this idea of marrying a Dutch girl, I would turn around and run away fast. It´s very unattractive for me to think that a guy was looking for a Dutch girl specifically. Girls are not like dogs, where a specific race is what you should be looking for.

Secondly, perhaps you have this idea in your head now that American girls aren´t nice. This changes your judgement and also the way people react to you. I have met some horrible, HORRIBLE men in Turkey. The lowest of the lowest. Calling them dogs would be an insult to dogs. However, I always tried my best to not judge all Turkish men based on those experiences. That is why later on I did meet decent, friendly, and nice men in Turkey. Perhaps the people in your surroundings at the moment aren´t the best that America has to offer! You wouldn´t want to judge all Turkish men by the Turks that are dancing on tables in the touristic bars, high on drugs, who are only interested in visa´s, money and sex , right?

One point you guys miss is that it is not about "me" only. I am in a highly diverse campus, populated by around 80% Americans and 20% foreigners. I am both a teacher, teaching undergraduates, and a student, studying my ph.d. You virtually see NO interaction between Americans and non Americans. There is an invisible wall between them. I tried in many occasions to mix into the crowd both as a teacher with my students, going to parties, events etc and also as a student with collegeaus. I was succesful with foreigners but Americans just don´t want to mingle with outsiders. I am not only talking about romantic relationships here. And that the women I meet simply don´t like me is a complete mis-statement because such an occasion never even took place. I also dated a couple people I met online, all happened to be foreigners, you know why? Because Americans never bother replying when you mention "foreigner or international or Turkish". In several occasions, where they seemed interested, they quit talking to me as soon as they understood I was foreigner or Turkish. So it basically is not a personality issue!

When you see people paying attention to you till they hear your accent signals to something! It´s not a fickle fabric of my imagination, it´s just out there, obvious with thousands of examples, also spelled out many times by my other foreign friends, who just had their individual opinions, but not yet put the pieces together from different people.

This is in no way an insult to American women, after all, Americans are not a race, they are a "global" people, as the most diverse society ever. But it is the general social attitude that I am criticizing, not the people´s selves per se. And because I am simply raising an issue, there is no reason to be offended by. Also misleading as it might be, I am only reflecting my experiences and observations in New England, and not necessarily the whole country.

Also I am still entitled to look for an "American woman", because first of all, most of the people here are American (around 90%) and it just makes things a lot harder when you´re isolated from the majority of the people, and discriminated against (so please don´t tell me it´s an insult to American women), secondly, those who are not American, either will leave the country sometime in the future or have very different traditions etc. Also Marrying an American is the best way to adapt to your environment. Likewise It is only natural to marry a Turkish girl and learn the Turkish traditions if you are going to live in Turkey. Also, Americans are not a "race", they are a nation of all ethnicities, so it´s not like conditioning yourself to one kinda people.

And finally I fail to see how the low life Turks you met match with this example. I am not talking about some specific examples I encountered or got resented and bitching about it, I am talking about the whole population and general attitude towards foreigners. When you went to Turkey, if all guys treated you the same over a large area, the size of Netherlands, then you have every right to spell it out.

One thing I noticed though, this attitude is more lenient in big cities like New york & Boston where people seemed more accepting. New England is mostly rural and the rural structure of the landscape coupled with the cold Northern Climate might be aggrevating the situation.

Ethnocentrism, xenophobia and the racist sentiment with various modes and intensities are all parts of our lives. They exist in the US and they exist in Turkey too.

Today, extreme right-wing parties freely advocating what could be considered as racist policies can get considerable public support. For example in Austria, the right wing party that calls for imposing restrictions on Turkish immigrants and suspending relations with Turkey could get 30% of the vote. Nevertheless, it is also true that the extremist discourse is usually meant for fishing for votes and they rarely put their silly promises into practice on rising to power. We have had nationalist and religious parties running the country. Could they convert us into what they advertised in their election campaigns? No. That is to say, much of this is really word salad. There are indeed racist elements underneath but as long as the they are not backed by the laws, all that we can do is ignoring them. We must however fight against racist elements in rules, regulations, policies and public statements.

All said, there is little cure in this for your problem about socializing with the US females. To my surprize, they have never been crazy for me either. Luckily, I haven´t been attracted to them either. You know when you live in different worlds, this does not pose a problem. You don´t want to spend your life with someone who has a completely different and incompatible mindset. There examples that prove, there are less typical Turks or Americans than what most people believe.

Usually, we talk, believing that we are making a point. In reality, our listeners derive different messages from our words. These messages are hidden in many aspects of our speech. Although they fail to reflect what you really want to say, they do convey a message regarding who you actually are. For example, I don´t like your "typical Turk" description nor do I like your generalization about American women. Moreover, I don´t agree with your generalization about European women either. Three disagreements following one another. If I were a woman that would be enough for me to keep my distance. A mind that divides people into classes is capable of doing other mildly irritating things. Here is a rule of the thumb, if you divide people into three or more categories and blame them for one thing or another, you are probably a megalomaniac. Of course, you haven´t done this and I am not calling you that but that is just an example...

Although strickly not a problem associated with you as a person, megalomania is quite common among young people and in the campus environment. It is surely one way to beat boredom. Young people live in an oversimplified world where the sky is the only limit. After turning a few pages on the text book, they look at butchers, green grocers and other craftsmen around and dub themselves the next Einstein. A single word could convert them into revolutionaries. I know because I was young too. I had problems understanding women too. I was always amazed why they weren´t attracted to such a high IQ man like me. I was unable to see myself through the eyes of another person then. Even today, that point is a bit problematic.

And the punch line is, the entire America can not be against you. There are still millions of people with whom you could connect with. It is just a matter of trying with patience.

Is the area of Kusadasi, Bodrum, Marmaris, Antalya big enough for you? And also in the bus to Konya. I have had times where it felt like the whole of Turkey was out for either my money, a visa, or to cheat on their wives/girlfriends. But I also went out of my way to find decent people.

If you don´t feel comfortable in the town you are living in, perhaps it´s time for you to move instead of joining an internet forum just to vent this frustration. Just like I don´t go to certain Turkish sea-side resorts anymore, since the people there make me puke.

By the way... I have to note that there is a certain type of Turkish man that rubs me the wrong way too. I am not attracted to this type at all, and in general they tend to be highly educated so it´s not about visa´s or money. There seems to be a cultural difference between me and them. And when I make clear that I´m not interested in them, they start to blame me, or accuse me of being superficial, saying I´m not attracted to them because of their non-athletic looks. This silly childish blaming makes them even more unattractive! They are coming on too strong, too fast. This might be the Turkish way, the romantic lover, the hunter, but for a girl like me this is irritating. I don´t even want to be friends with such a person. Perhaps part of your problem is a difference in culture. Turkish men can be frightening to people from a more distant and cool culture.